Her high heels so nearly slipped from under her that they were compelled to hold each other as if in an embrace. "If you had—what?"
He knew what, but the words in which to say it needed a higher mode of utterance. The red lips, the glowing cheeks, had the vitality of the lively eyes. A red tam-o'-shanter, a red knitted thing like a heavenly translation of his own earthly sweater, were bewitchingly diabolic when worn with a black skirt, black stockings, and black shoes.
As he did not respond to her challenge, she went on with her self-introduction. "I guess you haven't seen me, because I only arrived three days ago. I'm Mrs. Danker's niece. Live in Nashua. Worked in the woolen mills there. Now I've come to visit my aunt for the winter."
For the sake of hearing her speak, he asked if she was going to work in Boston.
"I don't know. Maybe I'll take singing lessons. Got a swell voice."
If again he was dumb it was because of the failure of his faculties. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for the give-and-take of a badinage in which the surface meanings were the less important. Foolish and helpless, unable to show his manly superiority except in the strength with which he held her up, he got a lesson in the new art there and then.
"Ever dance?"
"I'm never asked."
"Oh, it's you that ought to do the asking."